FROM A LIMESTONE LEDGE: Some Essays and Other Ruminations About Country Life in Texas

by John Graves ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 1980

The essays of Texas farmer/naturalist John Graves (Hard Scrabble, Goodbye to a River) are a mother lode of clear-eyed observation, wry wit, and warm-hearted humanity. In a piece on ""Noticing,"" he observes: ""in surroundings that you care for and have chosen, you use eyes, ears, nose, tastebuds, and whatever other aids you can master for reception. You notice."" Here, Graves notices the country dweller's urge to build fences and just about anything else (""Like tetanus, the organism that causes construction fever thrives in rural air. . .""). He notices the processing of meat and home-made wine and the recycling of trash (""the ability to amass junk and to use it ingeniously in a measure of true countryness""). He notices creatures, from his own ""nineteen cows,"" a paltry string qualifying him by Texas standards as a ""miniature rancher,"" to goats, bees, chickens (""one of the nicest things about chickens is that it's rather hard to get emotionally involved with them""), and dogs like Blue, a Nicer Dog than he deserves whose story he tells with old-fashioned heart-stopping feeling. Graves notices other phenomena too--from the weather to crackpot treasure hunters to tobacco dippers (snuff users), sadly lacking in ""social cachet,"" and tobacco chewers. He concludes with the public auction of the goods of a ""loser,"" a marginal rancher who didn't make it and whose failure underscores the tenuousness of Graves' connection with a larger land. Graves' carefully honed essays--colloquial, disarming, winning--are, like the yin du pays or chewing tobacco he writes about, the real thing.

Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION